Merze Tate was the first African-American graduate of Western Michigan Teachers College and the first African-American woman to attend the University of Oxford. We speak with Sonya Bernard Hollins, one of today’s leading experts on the life of Merze Tate.

The credit given to Henry Ford for inventing the automobile and the assembly line is somewhat exaggerated, according to the author of a new book called “Drive! Henry Ford, George Selden and the Race to invent the Auto Age.” We talk with Lawrence Goldstone about his book.

An Ann Arbor writer remembers sailing the Great Lakes as a porter on a Ford Motor Company ship. Current State's Peter Whorf speaks with Roger LeLeivre about his Summer of 1973, sailing the Great Lakes as a cargo ship porter.

For six decades, Lansing’s Sparrow Hospital ran a nursing school near its main campus on Michigan Avenue. For the past 95 years, the alumni of that school have held a reunion. Tomorrow, that legacy comes to an end. Current State’s Kevin Lavery talks with a retired registered nurse from the Sparrow Nursing School Class of 1960.